US Attorney General Bill Barr faces tough questions in the Senate Wednesday after the explosive revelation that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had objected to his downplaying of the Russia investigation report's allegations against President Donald Trump.
Barr appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee amid an uproar over revelations that Mueller felt that Barr, in declaring in late March that the Russia report cleared Trump of wrongdoing, had misrepresented the evidence and conclusions of the nearly two-year investigation.
Three days after Barr's March 24 summary of the report allowed Trump to declare that he was completely exonerated, Mueller wrote that his summary generated "public confusion" about the report's results.
Barr's four-page summary "did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance," of the investigation's conclusions, the letter said.
The 448-page report, finally released on April 18, said it did not find evidence that Trump's campaign conspired with Russians interfering in the 2016 presidential election.
On a second focus, Mueller declined to rule whether Trump himself had committed a crime of obstruction in his interference and pressure on the investigation.
But Mueller laid out a large body of evidence showing repeated efforts by the Trump team to collude with the Russians, and a damning pattern of obstructive behavior by the president that Mueller suggested Congress itself should investigate.
Mueller's letter indicated what many critics said of Barr once the full report was finally released -- that he had deliberately downplayed the evidence Mueller's team had compiled in order to declare Trump free of suspicion.
"There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation," Mueller wrote.
"This threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the (Justice)Department appointed the special counsel: to assure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations."
That warning has proven true: while Barr's distillation has encouraged the Republican White House to declare Trump exonerated, many Democrats are claiming the opposite and the party is debating whether to open impeachment proceedings against the president.
After the revelation of the Mueller letter, a number of Democrats in Congress called for an investigation and possibly impeachment of Barr himself.
Several alleged Barr had lied on two occasions to Congress in April on the substance of his communications with Mueller about the report.
Barr "whitewashed the report," Senator Dick Durbin, a member of the Judiciary Committee, told CNN ahead of the hearing.
"He clearly misled" Congress, he said, and "virtually disqualified himself" from any more involvement in the Mueller investigation.
"Attorney General Barr should resign," said Democratic Representative Adam Schiff.
"He misled the American people with his inaccurate summary of Mueller's report. Then he misled the Congress when he denied knowledge of Mueller's concerns."
The White House has not commented on the Mueller letter.
But Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani told CNN that Mueller "should have made a decision and shouldn't be complaining or whining now that he didn't get described correctly" on the obstruction issue.
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